How you can help hundreds of kids have a camp experience that will ‘last a lifetime’

NewsMay 22, 2020by
Edward Keenan
Toronto Star

I remember a lot of things about the two weeks I spent at Bolton Camp, just outside Toronto, when I was a kid in the 1980s.

I remember sharing a cabin with a bunch of other boys who devised improvised Dungeons and Dragons games we played; the long walks in what seemed a vast wilderness in the surrounding woods, singing marching songs and speculating about the wild animals we might encounter; rushing through those woods to the arts and crafts cabin during free time to make bracelets out of coloured wire.

I remember it was the first time I’d spent so long — two weeks — away from my family, and only mailing home one of the 10 self-addressed envelopes my mother had packed for me. I remember helping my cousin, who was in a different cabin in a different age group, through his debilitating homesickness.

I remember singing songs and performing skits around massive bonfires that sent smoke and flames and sparks dancing up toward the endless black of the night sky. The sense that the camp itself, and the wilderness around it, were unaccountably vast. Getting lost in those seemingly uncharted woods after dark with my cabin-mates and new friends, and panicking, before finally finding our way back — causing an unintentional controversy by finding a route through the mysterious girls’ area of the camp. And I remember the dance party on the final weekend where we finally got to meet and talk with those girls.

I could go on for quite a while. Two weeks that loom large, alongside similarly short trips to the Haliburton Scout Reserve and Adventureland Cub camp, as defining experiences of my youth.

What I didn’t remember about it, because I didn’t learn it until I looked it up as I was writing this, was that Bolton Camp — which closed in 1999 after 75 years in operation — was a facility for Toronto kids from low-income areas. Kids like me back then, I guess. I had no sense at the time that I was the recipient of charity; that the camp was aiming to address some deprivation I was unaware I was experiencing. But it was, and it succeeded, and I’m glad that it did both.

Similarly, I didn’t quite realize until much later that the charitable day camps I attended (and later worked at) were services provided to parents in areas like the one I lived in who couldn’t afford fancier child care options. They were just camps — fun, mind-expanding, identity-defining ones. Ones I and the friends I met there got to attend because someone cared enough to provide the opportunity our parents’ financial circumstances were unlikely to otherwise allow.

The Toronto Star has long been working toward the same goal — today marks the kickoff of the fundraising drive for the 120th year of operation for the Star’s Fresh Air Fund, giving you, our readers, the chance to provide underprivileged and special needs kids the opportunity to experience the joys and growth of summer camps. The Fresh Air Fund, it turns out, gave money to found and operate Bolton Camp throughout its years, which means readers like you helped me go to camp. Though Bolton Camp is gone, the chance to provide the same help to kids today is still going strong.

It’s an unusual year, no doubt. In the midst of a pandemic, it’s not certain yet which of the camps will be able to open, and when. But the Fresh Air Fund will be ready, with your help, to assist those that do, when they do. And any funds not used this year will be available for the same purpose in 2021.

The fund was founded in 1901 by journalist John J. Kelso so needy children could enjoy the fresh air and natural environment. It was an idea that served tens of thousands of children in its early years and was copied in other cities.

Crusading Toronto Star publisher Joseph Atkinson adopted the Fund (along with the Santa Claus Fund), in keeping with his principles of community service and social justice that continue to guide the paper today. And in keeping with those principles, we carry on the Fresh Air Fund, giving new generations of Toronto children formative summer experiences that last a lifetime.

The goal is to raise $650,000 this year to be ready to send children to as many as 109 camps — 56 overnight camps, 53 day camps. In a year like this one, when people have been cooped up at home for months, isolated even from schoolmates, the opportunity to enjoy the fresh air as soon as it becomes possible might be more valuable than ever. And with so many people’s incomes cut off by coronavirus, the type of help the Fresh Air Fund provides might be more even more needed.

“Our readers have been extremely generous in past years and we hope they will be so again this year even though it’s a tough year for many of us,” said John Boynton, publisher of the Toronto Star and president of Torstar Corp.

“While many overnight camps are cancelled or their opening has been delayed, many day camps are expected to operate this summer. Day camps provide programs such as taking children from downtown areas out to a conservation area for a day. A lot of them have never ridden in a boat, never been in a canoe, never fished and they can have that chance at these camps. Such experiences can last a lifetime.”

I had those experiences, and they have lasted in my memory. Maybe you did too. Or maybe you wish you did. Now we all have the opportunity to help provide those memories to a child, who might one day look back, as I can, and reflect on how strangers they didn’t even know contributed to such an important part of who they became.

How to donate

With your gift, the Fresh Air Fund can help send disadvantaged and special needs children to camp. When things get back to normal, these children will get to take part in a camp experience they will cherish for a lifetime. Our target is $650,000.

Edward Keenan is the Star’s Washington Bureau chief. He covers U.S. politics and current affairs. Reach him via email: ekeenan@thestar.ca

How you can help hundreds of kids have a camp experience that will ‘last a lifetime’

NewsMay 22, 2020by
Edward Keenan
Toronto Star

I remember a lot of things about the two weeks I spent at Bolton Camp, just outside Toronto, when I was a kid in the 1980s.

I remember sharing a cabin with a bunch of other boys who devised improvised Dungeons and Dragons games we played; the long walks in what seemed a vast wilderness in the surrounding woods, singing marching songs and speculating about the wild animals we might encounter; rushing through those woods to the arts and crafts cabin during free time to make bracelets out of coloured wire.

I remember it was the first time I’d spent so long — two weeks — away from my family, and only mailing home one of the 10 self-addressed envelopes my mother had packed for me. I remember helping my cousin, who was in a different cabin in a different age group, through his debilitating homesickness.

I remember singing songs and performing skits around massive bonfires that sent smoke and flames and sparks dancing up toward the endless black of the night sky. The sense that the camp itself, and the wilderness around it, were unaccountably vast. Getting lost in those seemingly uncharted woods after dark with my cabin-mates and new friends, and panicking, before finally finding our way back — causing an unintentional controversy by finding a route through the mysterious girls’ area of the camp. And I remember the dance party on the final weekend where we finally got to meet and talk with those girls.

I could go on for quite a while. Two weeks that loom large, alongside similarly short trips to the Haliburton Scout Reserve and Adventureland Cub camp, as defining experiences of my youth.

What I didn’t remember about it, because I didn’t learn it until I looked it up as I was writing this, was that Bolton Camp — which closed in 1999 after 75 years in operation — was a facility for Toronto kids from low-income areas. Kids like me back then, I guess. I had no sense at the time that I was the recipient of charity; that the camp was aiming to address some deprivation I was unaware I was experiencing. But it was, and it succeeded, and I’m glad that it did both.

Similarly, I didn’t quite realize until much later that the charitable day camps I attended (and later worked at) were services provided to parents in areas like the one I lived in who couldn’t afford fancier child care options. They were just camps — fun, mind-expanding, identity-defining ones. Ones I and the friends I met there got to attend because someone cared enough to provide the opportunity our parents’ financial circumstances were unlikely to otherwise allow.

The Toronto Star has long been working toward the same goal — today marks the kickoff of the fundraising drive for the 120th year of operation for the Star’s Fresh Air Fund, giving you, our readers, the chance to provide underprivileged and special needs kids the opportunity to experience the joys and growth of summer camps. The Fresh Air Fund, it turns out, gave money to found and operate Bolton Camp throughout its years, which means readers like you helped me go to camp. Though Bolton Camp is gone, the chance to provide the same help to kids today is still going strong.

It’s an unusual year, no doubt. In the midst of a pandemic, it’s not certain yet which of the camps will be able to open, and when. But the Fresh Air Fund will be ready, with your help, to assist those that do, when they do. And any funds not used this year will be available for the same purpose in 2021.

The fund was founded in 1901 by journalist John J. Kelso so needy children could enjoy the fresh air and natural environment. It was an idea that served tens of thousands of children in its early years and was copied in other cities.

Crusading Toronto Star publisher Joseph Atkinson adopted the Fund (along with the Santa Claus Fund), in keeping with his principles of community service and social justice that continue to guide the paper today. And in keeping with those principles, we carry on the Fresh Air Fund, giving new generations of Toronto children formative summer experiences that last a lifetime.

The goal is to raise $650,000 this year to be ready to send children to as many as 109 camps — 56 overnight camps, 53 day camps. In a year like this one, when people have been cooped up at home for months, isolated even from schoolmates, the opportunity to enjoy the fresh air as soon as it becomes possible might be more valuable than ever. And with so many people’s incomes cut off by coronavirus, the type of help the Fresh Air Fund provides might be more even more needed.

“Our readers have been extremely generous in past years and we hope they will be so again this year even though it’s a tough year for many of us,” said John Boynton, publisher of the Toronto Star and president of Torstar Corp.

“While many overnight camps are cancelled or their opening has been delayed, many day camps are expected to operate this summer. Day camps provide programs such as taking children from downtown areas out to a conservation area for a day. A lot of them have never ridden in a boat, never been in a canoe, never fished and they can have that chance at these camps. Such experiences can last a lifetime.”

I had those experiences, and they have lasted in my memory. Maybe you did too. Or maybe you wish you did. Now we all have the opportunity to help provide those memories to a child, who might one day look back, as I can, and reflect on how strangers they didn’t even know contributed to such an important part of who they became.

How to donate

With your gift, the Fresh Air Fund can help send disadvantaged and special needs children to camp. When things get back to normal, these children will get to take part in a camp experience they will cherish for a lifetime. Our target is $650,000.

Edward Keenan is the Star’s Washington Bureau chief. He covers U.S. politics and current affairs. Reach him via email: ekeenan@thestar.ca

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How you can help hundreds of kids have a camp experience that will ‘last a lifetime’

NewsMay 22, 2020by
Edward Keenan
Toronto Star

I remember a lot of things about the two weeks I spent at Bolton Camp, just outside Toronto, when I was a kid in the 1980s.

I remember sharing a cabin with a bunch of other boys who devised improvised Dungeons and Dragons games we played; the long walks in what seemed a vast wilderness in the surrounding woods, singing marching songs and speculating about the wild animals we might encounter; rushing through those woods to the arts and crafts cabin during free time to make bracelets out of coloured wire.

I remember it was the first time I’d spent so long — two weeks — away from my family, and only mailing home one of the 10 self-addressed envelopes my mother had packed for me. I remember helping my cousin, who was in a different cabin in a different age group, through his debilitating homesickness.

I remember singing songs and performing skits around massive bonfires that sent smoke and flames and sparks dancing up toward the endless black of the night sky. The sense that the camp itself, and the wilderness around it, were unaccountably vast. Getting lost in those seemingly uncharted woods after dark with my cabin-mates and new friends, and panicking, before finally finding our way back — causing an unintentional controversy by finding a route through the mysterious girls’ area of the camp. And I remember the dance party on the final weekend where we finally got to meet and talk with those girls.

I could go on for quite a while. Two weeks that loom large, alongside similarly short trips to the Haliburton Scout Reserve and Adventureland Cub camp, as defining experiences of my youth.

What I didn’t remember about it, because I didn’t learn it until I looked it up as I was writing this, was that Bolton Camp — which closed in 1999 after 75 years in operation — was a facility for Toronto kids from low-income areas. Kids like me back then, I guess. I had no sense at the time that I was the recipient of charity; that the camp was aiming to address some deprivation I was unaware I was experiencing. But it was, and it succeeded, and I’m glad that it did both.

Similarly, I didn’t quite realize until much later that the charitable day camps I attended (and later worked at) were services provided to parents in areas like the one I lived in who couldn’t afford fancier child care options. They were just camps — fun, mind-expanding, identity-defining ones. Ones I and the friends I met there got to attend because someone cared enough to provide the opportunity our parents’ financial circumstances were unlikely to otherwise allow.

The Toronto Star has long been working toward the same goal — today marks the kickoff of the fundraising drive for the 120th year of operation for the Star’s Fresh Air Fund, giving you, our readers, the chance to provide underprivileged and special needs kids the opportunity to experience the joys and growth of summer camps. The Fresh Air Fund, it turns out, gave money to found and operate Bolton Camp throughout its years, which means readers like you helped me go to camp. Though Bolton Camp is gone, the chance to provide the same help to kids today is still going strong.

It’s an unusual year, no doubt. In the midst of a pandemic, it’s not certain yet which of the camps will be able to open, and when. But the Fresh Air Fund will be ready, with your help, to assist those that do, when they do. And any funds not used this year will be available for the same purpose in 2021.

The fund was founded in 1901 by journalist John J. Kelso so needy children could enjoy the fresh air and natural environment. It was an idea that served tens of thousands of children in its early years and was copied in other cities.

Crusading Toronto Star publisher Joseph Atkinson adopted the Fund (along with the Santa Claus Fund), in keeping with his principles of community service and social justice that continue to guide the paper today. And in keeping with those principles, we carry on the Fresh Air Fund, giving new generations of Toronto children formative summer experiences that last a lifetime.

The goal is to raise $650,000 this year to be ready to send children to as many as 109 camps — 56 overnight camps, 53 day camps. In a year like this one, when people have been cooped up at home for months, isolated even from schoolmates, the opportunity to enjoy the fresh air as soon as it becomes possible might be more valuable than ever. And with so many people’s incomes cut off by coronavirus, the type of help the Fresh Air Fund provides might be more even more needed.

“Our readers have been extremely generous in past years and we hope they will be so again this year even though it’s a tough year for many of us,” said John Boynton, publisher of the Toronto Star and president of Torstar Corp.

“While many overnight camps are cancelled or their opening has been delayed, many day camps are expected to operate this summer. Day camps provide programs such as taking children from downtown areas out to a conservation area for a day. A lot of them have never ridden in a boat, never been in a canoe, never fished and they can have that chance at these camps. Such experiences can last a lifetime.”

I had those experiences, and they have lasted in my memory. Maybe you did too. Or maybe you wish you did. Now we all have the opportunity to help provide those memories to a child, who might one day look back, as I can, and reflect on how strangers they didn’t even know contributed to such an important part of who they became.

How to donate

With your gift, the Fresh Air Fund can help send disadvantaged and special needs children to camp. When things get back to normal, these children will get to take part in a camp experience they will cherish for a lifetime. Our target is $650,000.